What about a GameCube controller? Still can’t use that on Linux (at least I haven’t figured it out).

Yeah it’s a really well rounded hatred.

I see it as a gateway. A lot of people will go to the protest, talk to other people, and maybe get involved with something more meaningful.

No US losses, not a single soldier?

7 soldiers were injured by shrapnel or gunshot wounds. There hasn’t been any announcement of US deaths.

Not a wall of bodyguards around Maduro?

The Cuban government provided elite guards for Maduro. They announced that 32 of them were killed in the raid.

yet they didn’t have any radars set up to detect air infiltration?

They certainly did. Detecting aircraft doesn’t mean you can do anything about it. This was a big operation with explosions all over the city. Many of those were knocking out air defenses and targeting air bases. Some of the aircraft used were stealthy and might have evaded detection before striking air defenses. 150 aircraft from the Navy, Air Force, and Marines were used.

All of the equipment shipped in from Russia and China leading up to this moment, no missiles that could’ve taken out those low flying helicopters?

I’m not familiar with China’s military aid. But IIRC, Russia flew one transport plane with “air defenses” which is more of a symbolic gesture than a solution. Let’s not forget that using advanced aircraft to strike deep within contested airspace is kind of the US military’s whole thing. By the time the helicopters showed up, any air defenses that could have brought them down were already dealt with.

They capture Maduro AND his wife? Why his wife, it just seems an unnecessary liability to add to the equation.

Yeah idk. That is weird.

but what they haven’t taken over Venezuela?

…yet. My guess is that they learned from Iraq. In Iraq, they did the same kind of thing to Saddam and then took over and tried to run the country. That turned out to be a huge political problem for the US for decades. They want Venezuela to essentially be a vassal of the US, which they can do without directly running the country. Likely they are using the threat of doing this again to push Venezuelan politics toward giving concessions to the US.

Feels like a psychological operation to make us believe the US hegemony is alive and just as invincible as it’s always been

At this point you are purely reaching for conspiracy to fit things within your preferred narrative. The rest of your post is very conspiratorial. A lot of parties are kind of shocked at the moment and waiting for some of the dust to settle before taking concrete action.

Is this trolling? I’ve never heard any of these fake quotes.

Yep. The worst part of winter isn’t all the clothing. It’s getting undressed every time you arrive at your destination.

I agree with this sentiment. In general, I think that leftist political ideas are quite popular when you swap out the leftist terminology. “The real culture war is between the shareholders and the workers” doesn’t raise a person’s guard like “The bourgeoisie are oppressing the proletariat”. It also forces you to explain a little about your meaning to somebody who maybe doesn’t already know what these terms mean. Whenever I’m trying to talk politics with someone who is open-minded but not explicitly leftist, I try to use this tactic so I don’t immediately run into a wall of conditioned responses.

Man I don’t see that being true at all. From my perspective, it makes fascism, oligarchy, and authoritarianism the much more likely outcomes after capitalism decays away. You’re assuming that the workers gaining class consciousness is inevitable. Centralized industry is just fruit ripe for the picking by a proletariat uprising. I really doubt thats how it will go down.

Capitalism’s decay compels the rise of socialism.

This is the part I would disagree with. I don’t think history has a foreseeable trajectory. I don’t think anything is inevitable. Saying otherwise is giving too much credit to narrative.

Socialism is overtaking capitalism

I wanna live in whatever world you’re talking about. It sure feels to me like fascism is overtaking capitalism.

I don’t think it’s right to assume that people who block political online content are doing nothing. Hell, I think it’s more likely that people who consume a lot of political content feel that they’re doing something when they aren’t.